高级英语09_Mirror of America.pptVIP

Lesson 9 Mark Twain Mirror of America Objectives of Teaching: To comprehend the whole text To learn and master the vocabulary and expressions To learn to paraphrase the difficult sentences To understand the structure of the text To appreciate the style and rhetoric of the passage. 5 aspects of our discussion Background information Type of writing Structural analysis Detailed study Rhetorical devices I. Background Information: 1. Mark Twain (1835-1910) Mark Twain was the pseudonym of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, the American humorist and writer. The phrase “mark twain”, meaning “2 fathoms deep”(12 feet), was employed in making soundings on the Mississippi river boats to show the navigable depth. He was the author of popular and outstanding autobiographical works, travel books and novels. I. Background Information: The first 36 years of Clemens’ life as a boy in a little town in Mississippi, as a reporter on the far western frontier and as a traveler abroad supplied him with copious material which he used later for his best and most successful writings. Among his well-known works are Innocents Abroad, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. I. Background Information: 2 . National Geographic Magazine, with a circulation of more than 10 million copies annually, is the third biggest only next to TV Guide and Readers Digest (more than 16 million ). It is a monthly journal run by the National Geographic Society based in Washington DC, a non-profit scientific and educational organization. I. Background Information: 3. A brief outline of Tom Tom lives with his younger brother Sid and Aunt Polly in St. Petersburg, a remote town on the banks of the Mississippi river. While his brother Sid is a “model” boy, Tom is quite the opposite of his brother. I. Background Information: At school he disobeys his teacher and always busies himself with outside matters at the lessons. Tom’s bosom friend is Huck Finn, a boy deserted by his drunkard of a father and looked